Paintings from the Florene May Schoenborn and Samuel A
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The School of Paris : paintings from the Florene May Schoenborn and Samuel A. Marx collection Preface by Alfred H. Barr, Jr., introduction by James Thrall Soby, notes by Lucy R. Lippard Author Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.) Date 1965 Publisher The Museum of Modern Art: Distributed by Doubleday ISBN 087070575X Exhibition URL www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/2838 The Museum of Modern Art's exhibition history—from our founding in 1929 to the present—is available online. It includes exhibition catalogues, primary documents, installation views, and an index of participating artists. MoMA © 2017 The Museum of Modern Art 56 pages , 45 illustrations (16 in color) $5.95 The School of Paris Paintings from the Florene May Schoenborn and Samuel A. Marx Collection Foreword by Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Introduction by James Thrall Soby, Notes by Lucy R. Lippard Some twenty-five years ago in Chicago the late Samuel A. Marx and his wife Florene began to form what was to become, as James Thrall Soby states, "a collection of such authority that it would be difficult to think of its rival among pri vate collections of modern art." They were not avant-garde, for they confined themselves to the well-known painters of the School of Paris. Yet, as Alfred H. Barr, Jr. points out, "they were col lectors of courage ... shown in selecting what they felt to be best without regard for conven tional proprieties." They pioneered in being among the first to dare bring into their home paintings that to most collectors at the time would have seemed too big, too aggressive, and too strong to live with— Matisses of the heroic period of 1911 to 1916 culminating in The Mo roccans, Leger's Woman with Cat, an extraordi nary range of Picassos demonstrating many as pects of that protean master's style. Other works are smaller in scale or more serene in mood, yet all show the collectors' aim to buy and cherish truly exalted works by artists of international re pute. Kept small deliberately by continuous dis tillation and refinement, the collection has won admiration and deep respect. This book, published on the occasion of the first public showing of the paintings, reproduces them all— more than a third in color. Lucy R. Lip pard has provided meticulously researched notes that give much valuable and illuminating infor mation for each painting. The Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53 Street New York, N.Y. 10019 Distributed by Doubleday & Co., Garden City, New York The School of Paris Errata Page 10 The plate of MATISSE. Goldfish (1915-16) is printed in reverse. Page 16, line 2 For OIL ON WOOD read OIL ON CANVAS. The School of Paris In the captions dates in parentheses do not appear on the work. In dimensions height precedes width. Following page: HENRI MATISSE. French, 1869-1954. Moroccan Garden , 1912. Oil on canvas, 46 x 32%". Purchased 1951. It has been pointed out that when Matisse traveled to Tangier for the first time, in the winter of 1911-12, the excitement it inspired in him was not due to its exoticism, but to the new, purely visual responses it drew from him as an artist. Nevertheless, there is a quasi-Oriental languor in the way the three plump curves at the left meet the sinuous grace of the tree at the right to form a broad arabesque between them that dominates this picture. There is not a straight line in the canvas; the forms are as soft and lush as the colors, and over all hovers a sense of noonday heat and stillness. It is one of the three park or garden scenes done at the time, and the most stylized, abstract and flatly conceived of the group. Ma tisse was attracted to the brilliant colors and to the strange flora- such as the acanthus plant found here, which he had never seen outside of stone carvings on Corinthian capitals. I The School of Paris PAINTINGS FROM THE FLORENE MAY SCHOENBORN AND SAMUEL A. MARX COLLECTION Preface by Alfred H. Barr, Jr. Introduction by James Thrall Soby Notes by Lucy R. Lippard THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, NEW YORK in collaboration with The Art Institute of Chicago, City Art Museum of St. Louis, San Francisco Museum of Art, Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico DISTRIBUTED BY DOUBLEDAY & COMPANY, GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK 6 7^. 2 3 A l U >ty£- /UMft PREFACE 11°! To visit the apartment of Sam and Florene Marx was a unique experience even for one who had been inspect ing private collections of modern art with more or less professional scrutiny for over forty years. Neither in Chicago nor more recently in New York were the Marx apartments large—or did they merely seem modest in size because the objets d'art were so many and the paintings so big? Everywhere, in the vitrines, on shelves, pedestals and table tops, in corners were things to look at—objects superbly chosen with knowledge and dis crimination. Sam Marx was an architect and a distin guished designer of interiors but his apartment did not at all suffer from the cautious restraint of conventional good taste. Variety, a spirit of enthusiasm and rich pro fusion were there; profusion, yes, but magically, with out clutter. And then one raised one's eyes: the minor pleasures of the foreground faded and there on the walls were the pictures. In several ways Florene and Sam Marx were not pio neers when, together, they began to collect paintings, some twenty-five years ago. They could, and perhaps did, look back to those redoubtable San Francisco ex patriates Leo and Gertrude and Sarah Stein, who as early TRUSTEES OF THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART as 1905 had felt that Matisse and Picasso would be the David Rockefeller, Chairman of the Board; Henry Allen Moe, Vice- two great new masters of the twentieth century. But Chairman; William S. Paley, Vice-Chairman ; Mrs. Bliss Parkinson, the Marxes were not avant garde; only once did they President and Vice-Chairman; James Thrall Soby, Vice-President; buy a canvas while the paint was still wet. Nor did they Ralph F. Colin, Vice-President; Gardner Cowles, Vice-President; Willard C. Butcher, Treasurer; Walter Bareiss, Alfred H. Barr, Jr., venture outside the well-known painters of the School *Mrs. Robert Woods Bliss, William A. M. Burden, *Mrs. W. Mur of Paris. Their courage— and courage they had—was ray Crane, John de Menil, Rene d'Harnoncourt, Mrs. C. Douglas Dillon, Mrs. Edsel B. Ford, *Mrs. Simon Guggenheim, Wallace K. Harrison, Mrs. Walter Hochschild, *James W. Husted, Philip John son, Mrs. Albert D. Lasker, John L. Loeb, Ranald H. Macdonald, Porter A. McCray, *Mrs. G. Macculloch Miller, Mrs. Charles S. Pay- son, *Duncan Phillips, Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd, Nelson A. Rockefeller, Mrs. Wolfgang Schoenborn, Mrs. Donald B. Straus, *Edward M. M. Warburg, Monroe Wheeler, John Hay Whitney. * Honorary Trustee ©1965, The Museum of Modern Art 11 West 53 Street, New York, N.Y. 10019 Library of Congress Card Catalogue Number: 65-25727 Printed in the U.S.A. by Lebanon Valley Offset Company, Inc. Designed by Joseph Bourke Del Valle The Museum of Modern Art Library shown in selecting what they felt to be best without The Marxes saw it and insisted on buying it to keep regard to the conventional proprieties. They did not for awhile before giving it to the Museum. In Chicago prudently shun paintings that were in size and de The Moroccans took a dominating place in the Marx meanor "unsuitable for the home," paintings that dining room where previously Picasso and Matisse rudely asserted themselves in company, that tended to had engaged in even competition. Fortunately for the diminish the scale of living rooms or, one might add, Museum, the New York apartment was somewhat the scale of owners and their guests. smaller so that, thanks to the generous Marxes, The This is not to say that all the Marx pictures are heavy Moroccans now more than holds its own in the Mu artillery. Some are small and easily domesticated and seum's Matisse gallery. some of the best large ones—the Braque Yellow Table cloth and the wonderful Bonnard— are gentle, charm ing and serene. But what gives the Marx collection its Now for the first time the paintings, small as well as character is the dozen or so magnificent paintings that large, in the Sam and Florene Marx collection (includ even ten years ago would have seemed, to most col ing works given to museums) are to be shown publicly lectors, too big, too aggressive and too strong to live in The Museum of Modern Art and then in The Art In with: Leger's Woman with Cat, La Fresnaye's Artillery stitute of Chicago, the City Art Museum of St. Louis, the and Dubuffet's Building Faqades; Picasso's Woman's San Francisco Museum of Art and the Museo de Arte Head and cubist Woman with Pears, his monstrous Moderno in Mexico City. Florene Marx, now Mrs. Wolf blue surrealist Woman by the Sea and his Girl Reading; gang Schoenborn, with the gracious agreement of her and, finally, the heroic Matisses of the great years 1911 husband, has made these exhibitions possible. Her fel to 1916: the largest and most abstract of the seven low Trustees of The Museum of Modern Art wish to goldfish paintings, de Heem's grandiose, seventeenth- thank Mrs. Schoenborn for her public-spirited gener century still life exploding into color, the austere osity in lending the collection to the Museum so that Woman on a High Stool (a favorite of Florene Marx) it may be shown not only in New York but in other and the culminatory Moroccans.